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Gun Show

I spent Saturday with my oldest son, my Dad and a long-time friend of my Dad's. We started off the day by going to the gun show. It had been a few years since we had been to a gun show, so we headed out to the State Fairgrounds to see what there was.

There has been some speculation that a Democrat in the White House would be likely to try and make changes to restrict gun freedoms. I think Obama winning the election has spurred a lot of people to hedge their bets and consider buying a gun (or another one) as well as some extra ammunition. This is probably a good idea within limits as firearms have typically been a good value holder, and if gun laws get tightened much, some types of weapons might see a tremendous price jump.

We weren't looking for any new guns, just wishful thinking. Window shopping was all my budget could handle. There was a lot to see and a lot of people that wanted to see it. There were some very neat guns, including antiques, some with price tags as high as $65,000. As far as the guns for ordinary people, I didn't see anything with a price that would have tempted me. In talking with other people, the general consensus was that since the election, prices have gone up on guns and this gun show was reflective of that.

After a few hours of walking around, we started to get hungry. Fortunately, my Dad was prepared so we headed out to his truck. He had hamburger patties and a gas grill which we fired up in the truck bed. Pretty much everyone that walked by was jealous, but we enjoyed it.

Afterwords, we decided we had had enough of the gun show for the day and decided to head over to the range and fire a few rounds. Unfortunately, the first range we went to was already closed. The second one we went to had a line of people. They said the wait was about 40 minutes, but it ended up being over an hour and a half. My Dad's friend couldn't wait any longer so my Dad dropped him off while my son and I started shooting.

We had fun shooting several of our guns, but when the guy in the next lane started shooting an HK MP5 in Full Auto mode, my sons eyes got huge. He noticed and offered to let my son shoot it. He had the Range Safety Officer show him how to use it. My son shot a couple rounds in single shot mode and then switched it to full auto and emptied the remaining shots with a few trigger pulls. He also let us shoot a high end handgun he had with him that was very nice.

All-in-all, it was a great day. Stay tuned for the photography blog on this day coming soon.

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